"private eye" meaning in English

See private eye in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-private eye.ogg [Australia] Forms: private eyes [plural]
Etymology: From private investigator and its abbreviation P.I., through the homophonic term eye in place of "I", and the use of "eye" as a reference to surveillance. Etymology templates: {{m|en|private investigator}} private investigator, {{m|en|P.I.}} P.I., {{m|en|eye}} eye Head templates: {{en-noun}} private eye (plural private eyes)
  1. (idiomatic) A private personal detective, employed to gather information about someone. Tags: idiomatic Categories (topical): People, Stock characters Synonyms: private investigator, PI Translations (A private personal detective): soukromé očko [neuter] (Czech), soukromý detektiv [masculine] (Czech), yksityisetsivä (Finnish), Privatdetektiv [masculine] (German), Schnüffler [masculine] (German), privatdeckare [common-gender] (Swedish)

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for private eye meaning in English (3.0kB)

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  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "private investigator"
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      "expansion": "private investigator",
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  "etymology_text": "From private investigator and its abbreviation P.I., through the homophonic term eye in place of \"I\", and the use of \"eye\" as a reference to surveillance.",
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    {
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        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        {
          "kind": "topical",
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          "name": "Stock characters",
          "orig": "en:Stock characters",
          "parents": [
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      "glosses": [
        "A private personal detective, employed to gather information about someone."
      ],
      "id": "en-private_eye-en-noun-EOQbJLcd",
      "links": [
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A private personal detective, employed to gather information about someone."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "private investigator"
        },
        {
          "word": "PI"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "tags": [
            "neuter"
          ],
          "word": "soukromé očko"
        },
        {
          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "soukromý detektiv"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "word": "yksityisetsivä"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "Privatdetektiv"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "Schnüffler"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "A private personal detective",
          "tags": [
            "common-gender"
          ],
          "word": "privatdeckare"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-private eye.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/80/En-au-private_eye.ogg/En-au-private_eye.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/En-au-private_eye.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "private eye"
}
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        "2": "P.I."
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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "private eyes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
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        "English entries with incorrect language header",
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        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "en:People",
        "en:Stock characters"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A private personal detective, employed to gather information about someone."
      ],
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          "detective",
          "detective"
        ]
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        "(idiomatic) A private personal detective, employed to gather information about someone."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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      "tags": [
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    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "private investigator"
    },
    {
      "word": "PI"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cs",
      "lang": "Czech",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "tags": [
        "neuter"
      ],
      "word": "soukromé očko"
    },
    {
      "code": "cs",
      "lang": "Czech",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "soukromý detektiv"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "word": "yksityisetsivä"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "Privatdetektiv"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "Schnüffler"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "A private personal detective",
      "tags": [
        "common-gender"
      ],
      "word": "privatdeckare"
    }
  ],
  "word": "private eye"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.